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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 a.m. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, find [email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: I'm truly grateful for the opportunity to be here, and I'm humbled and honored.
There's several reasons for this. Some of you may know Paul Torrance Paul Torrance, back in the days of Noah was my speech teacher, mine and Peggy's.
Paul drilled it in our head that you should not say pride. You're ever proud of anything he said. The Bible never used the word pride in a good way.
I'm still, after all those years trying to get over that. He says we should be grateful.
Years later, he was my student and he still argued that. And then years later, he was a colleague of mine and he still said that I am grateful. I want to say proud to be here because for several things, one of the blessings of being an old professor is that you get to see and interact with your students. It's a blessing to have Jason, Brandon and Andrew as students of mine, and I learned a lot from them. When Andrew said he wanted to do that, I was excited. I know the theory. I did the same thing when I was a student. You did not choose a topic that you thought your professor did not knew about. You tried to pick one he didn't know about.
But from the professor's perspective, when somebody like Andrew says, I'm going to do something on the psalms in prayer, I got excited because beginning to work on that book, I might learn something. And I tell students that it took me a long time, but I learned that since I love to go to school, I can go a lot cheaper on the teacher side of the desk than I can go paying tuition. And so it's truly grateful. I'm grateful to be here. I want to say proud. Sorry, Paul. I'm grateful to be here and to heard so much about the Madison church. This is our first time being here and I'm extremely grateful. When I was attacked by Ronnie Misteldine as I was about to come up here. I haven't seen Ronnie in several years, and he and Sandra, and I'm so glad to see them. Ronnie and I go back long time doing mission work together, and even before that in the Ukraine, in the 90s.
I'm really thankful, too, to participate and to be here and to share something. And I'm going to stick close to my notes. Peggy told Brandon and andrew, I'm a walker and I am, but this topic means so much to me. If I get away from my notes, we might never get out of here. Because when I was preaching, when I preached on something that bothered me, I found out it bothered other people. But guess what? They had not mentioned it. And so the struggle that I had. This is a needed topic, and you're to be commended for your wanting to study this. And I've even learned something today. I've got to revise my book because I said there are no lament songs in our song books, and Brandon found one, and so we're singing it now. I got to say, there's hardly none. The thing is, when you look at the psalms 150, psalms, 75 of them are complaints. But I've even been at places where people would say, you should never complain to God. You should never tell him exactly how you feel.
Somehow they think God's going to get angry about that, and you shouldn't say those things. And I actually heard one lady say one time, it doesn't matter how bad it is, you should praise God and keep praising him until you feel better.
And I was struggling with some things then, and I just did not understand what she was talking about. So it is a very needed subject and I want to say something. Prayer is, at the time, our most intimate time with God. I don't think we realize that particularly individual prayer. It's our most intimate time, and it's a blessing that we have that many religions don't have. Even the old Testament, you had to go through the priest, but we got the priesthood of believers and Jesus is our high priest, and you can go one on one with God.
But I think many people are somewhere where I was and don't know it. Or maybe they do know it, where I had a crisis of prayer, prayer life. I was preaching in 1979, 77, 79, and I wrote a get ready for this I bout went crazy. I wrote for brother Rex Turner, senior at Alabama Christian School of religion. Predestination and the foreknowledge of God is perceived by church of Christ preachers, Bible teachers and christian colleges. And preacher training schools in the United States of America. So what do we believe about predestination and the foreknowledge of God? About went crazy with that. About drove my wife crazy and everybody else crazy about it. But when I got through with it, the net result was, and my joke is I had postpartum depression because I delivered that baby and nobody was interested.
But I looked deep in myself, and I realized that my prayer life stunk.
And I didn't know why.
I didn't understand why. And so I had a crisis of prayer life, and I struggled. And we flip it, and I don't mean flippantly, but we say God knows everything, and we'll get to that in a moment, but we don't think about how that affects our prayer life.
If he knows everything, he knows what you prayed, and he knows the result of that prayer. So why do you pray?
But you see, these kind of questions people don't like to ask in Bible classes.
But I'm an extrovert, probably the most extroverted extrovert you've ever seen. Peggy tells me, you don't have to tell everything you know all the time.
And so I think, well, if I got this question, other people have, so I'll ask it.
And so I started asking things like that, and I struggled with them. And nobody, sometimes they didn't like me asking them, and sometimes they had not thought about it either. Why pray at all if God knows everything? And should I tell God exactly how he feels? The ironic thing, when I'm teaching a class sometimes, and I say that, and people say, God knows everything, but you shouldn't complain to God. And then they'll go through and they'll say, well, God knows how we feel, doesn't he? And I said, yeah, so why are you saying you shouldn't complain if he already knows, according to your theological belief that he knows you're complaining?
And so, problem is, we need to reexamine our relationship with God. And I had to.
So we're told to praise God and not complain. And we go to one corinthians ten, where Paul talks about ancient Israel and their complaints and their sin, and we say, we shouldn't do that.
But we forget that Paul is talking about ancient Israel, and they were in a state of rebellion that's a little different than the psalmist complaining about their situation to God.
So, in 1984, I'm sitting in a psalms class in my phd program, and the professor, who was very liberal, but he was a calvinist, I think if he even believed part of those terms, very liberal. He started reading from John Calvin's institutes, and if anybody knew the institutes, I did.
I'd been embossed, baptized in those things to write that thesis. I had reformed theologians ask me how long I'd been a Calvinist, and so I knew that stuff.
And he got through reading what Calvin said about prayer. And then he started reading some of the psalms. And he said very sarcastically, the psalmist will look at John Calvin and say, Mr. Calvin, boy, you understand God. I don't understand God. I have to tell God how I feel and I have to argue with him. Let me show you what he was saying.
Well, let me ask some questions first.
Some of these questions. I told you a couple of them I asked, but there were a lot more. And perhaps you've asked them or heard them ask.
Let's get down to the basis. Why do we do what we do? What is prayer?
Is it communication, and is it two way communication by that? Do we expect God to answer us?
Why do we do it?
Is it a conversation between an individual privately and God? Or as we've prayed here today, if you pray publicly, there's a vertical aspect and there's an edification aspect, much like preaching.
So it's a conversation between God and individuals.
And if we're so, how does our prayers help us?
And when we pray, does God really listen?
And how do we imagine God when we pray to him? How do we think of him? What you think of God determines how you pray.
If you have a certain belief about God and think of him in a certain way, you may ask certain things of God that someone else who doesn't have that impression of God would not ask. Our prayers may differ that way.
Is it okay to express our feelings? Have you ever asked, why did this happen?
Is it okay to bargain with God?
I've heard people say, you shouldn't bargain with God.
Hannah, did you give me a son and I'll give him back to you.
Jacob did. He's fleeing from Esau and he says, you do 12345 and I'll give you a 10th. He was a good bargainer. And I think it may be that sometimes we say, you shouldn't bargain with God because we might be afraid God will take that bet, and then we have to live up to it.
It may be more of a reflection to us than others.
Do we try, when we pray, to influence God to do what we think is best?
And is it really acceptable to complain to God? I think it shows in our psalm books, though we sang a lament psalm today that we hardly have any, and I've been saying none. We don't have any complaint. Psalms. Psalms in our psalm books. And yet psalms have at least 50%.
And so what part does God play in our prayers?
Do you pray and look for answers?
And when you look for answers, when, where, and how does God answer them? Can you look at things in your life and say, I prayed for this on this date and at this time, God answered that? Or do we just pray because you're supposed to pray?
And so how do we expect God to answer our prayers? Should we look for events in our lives?
I personally do. Now, I know that I can never convince you of some of those events, but I'll go to my grave saying, I prayed this, and then God answered here, and praise the Lord for answering here. Then I prayed other times, and God answered. And I said, I don't like this. Answer, God.
I've got a cartoon. I wish I could have put it in the book. It shows a little girl praying. She's down on her knees. Be like little children. She's at a bed. She say her nightly prayers, and she says, now I want to tell you some things I'm not thankful for.
Have you ever felt like the little girl?
Is it wrong to feel that way?
I think a lot of these questions. I'm an extrovert. I think a lot of these questions people in Bible classes want to ask, but they're afraid that somebody will think they have bad faith. They're afraid that somebody will push it off. But these are the questions that need to be asked, and they're not new questions. You look to Luke eleven one.
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said, lord, teach us to pray. As John taught his disciples. And so the model prayer came out. Jesus gave them that model prayer.
We call it the Lord's prayer, but it's the model prayer. Lord's prayer is in John 17. But he wanted to know how to pray, so he thought he was missing something.
He thought he was lacking something. I need to put some. I need to drive a nail down here.
If you're honest with yourself, I bet you every one of you believes that you're not good prayers.
I feel that way now.
There's no place that we ever reach perfection in our prayer life. You may find a person that you think is a prayer. Parax lots. The greatest prayer in the world. If you get that person cornered and ask them, they'll say, I don't pray very well.
We don't reach perfection in our prayer life. It's a process. And as we grow deeper in the faith, we get better at it.
But in humility, we realize we haven't reached perfection.
So back to Calvin.
Why would Calvin write about prayer? Well, because Calvin believed in such a predestination. Did you know that he predetermined the words I'm speaking right now? According to words, even though I wrote them and I thought about them, God had predestined I would say those words right now, and he predestined that you would be here and you're having the thoughts you're having. He locked the world into a lockstep system and so he anticipated that if anybody believed that, that the prayers were even produced, came from God, somebody would say, well, why pray? So Calvin gave six reasons for prayer.
And the six reasons are prayer creates zeal in us.
It increases our love for God.
Watch how they're all focused on the prayer. Prayer awakens honorable desires and kills in us. Dishonorable desires make you more spiritual. Prayers should make you grateful for what God's done for you.
Prayers cause us to meditate on God's kindness.
Prayers cause us to acknowledge answered prayers, which is interesting to me. He's praying a prayer of thanks, which looks back to a prayer he prayed and all of that's been predestined anyway.
Prayer establishes faith in God's providence. Well, God's going to work out what he's already predetermined. You see how it's locked in? There's no interaction really between the prayer and God. And he said, here's how you should pray effectively, acceptably. Prayer reverently. Pray reverently without any distracting thoughts. Well, that's a given. We should pray reverently. Pray penitently, realizing that you can't do anything without God.
Penitently. We need to repent about our sins when we pray and confess them. Pray humbly, giving glory completely to God. It's not in ourselves. And pray confidently that we will succeed. Well, of course we'll succeed whatever God's predestined. When you take all this together, Calvin argued, prayer accomplishes nothing. It's for the purpose of bringing the supplicants feelings, hearts and belief in line with what God has predestined for knows.
So prayer is kind of empty, and that's where I was and didn't know it and then when I was in that psalms class. Yeah, we should pray humbly and repent with repentance.
That goes without saying, but we can approach God according to the verses we read here, Philippians four and Philippians four, Hebrews four. We can pray confidently about everything, but many pray like Calvin today and do not think their prayers may change God's mind. They don't believe that the future is open and that their prayers matter. So look at these verses. Philippians and Hebrews are the epigraph verses in my book. Look at Philippians four, six through seven.
We've already read it. Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This is what's called a prayer cycle.
It involves all aspects of prayer. Paul was a rabbi before he was an apostle.
And when you go to the psalms, you find this. The psalmists complain they have supplications, they have requests they make to God. And when God answers a prayer, they come back and say, thank you, God. And here's what I prayed, and here's how you answered me, and I will praise you forever for this. So there's a cycle that we're to engage in. We're supposed to tell God how we feel, tell God what bothers us, and it's about everything.
And then when the prayers are answered, we recognize the answering of those prayers and we come back and tell him, thank you.
These supplications and requests involve every act, everything in our lives, and we therefore give thanks about everything. So some days we're up and some days we're down. When we're up, we complain.
When we're down, we complain. But I said that backwards. When we're down, we complain, and when we're up, we praise God.
Hebrews 416 is the is a litchpin for me, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been. Every respect has been tested as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with, I'm reading NRSV boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace in the time, help in the time of need. Esv says, confidence, the word in Greek, can go either way. Either way accomplishes what we need to observe.
Jesus came and lived here, tempted in all points, like we are. The psalmists did not have that, and so they could state how they felt to God and would ask God to deal with it.
But Jesus, the hebrew writer, says in verses, chapter four, verses one, through ten, he says, don't repeat what the writer says. Don't repeat what Israel did wrong. Don't make their mistakes. Twelve through 13. He explains that the word of God makes all things hidden, would expose sin, expose everything and our thoughts.
Verses 14 through 16, he concludes that Jesus's sacrifice on our behalf should produce boldness. There's a contrast being made here.
The psalmist told God exactly how they felt, and they were timid.
They didn't have Jesus.
We have Jesus who understands, and it forms a more intimate bond. And therefore we can be confident or bold in our prayer life.
And so I think the ideas I just said is that the psalmist prayed timidly. Compared to this, Jesus had not yet come, but when he came, he demonstrated how to live and how to deal with sin, and he understands where we are.
We have assurance from Jesus's empathy that we can pray bolder prayers.
Now I use it in the book. Look at psalm 30.
We're going to try to understand what boldness or confidence is. I use this psalm twice in the book, and it was one my professor used. But the point that's illustrated, you can find over and over and over and over again in the psalms. You can find it with Jonah, you can find it with Jeremiah, where they stated to God how they felt and they didn't pray timidly. Psalm 30.
It's a praise psalm, a thanksgiving psalm. He's thanking God for having answered his past prayer. I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and did not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord, my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me, O Lord, you brought me back, brought up my soul from shield, restored me to life from among those gone down into the pit. He's rehearsing. I was about to die, and I prayed to you, and you answered me and you restored me.
Verse four. Sing praises to the Lord, o you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name, for his anger is but for a moment. His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. As for me, I said, in my prosperity, I shall never be moved by your favor, O Lord. You had established me as a strong mountain. And when you hid your face from me, I was dismayed. To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord, I lifted up my supplication. So he's praising God, thanking God for having saved his life.
And then he says, here's what I prayed.
Verse nine.
What profit is there in my death. They're rhetorical questions. He's asking God, what profit is there in my death? If I go down to the pit, will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness here, O Lord, and be gracious to me, be my helper? Then in verse eleven, he says, basically, you answer, you turn my morning into dancing. You have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy so that my soul may praise you and not be silent, o Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.
We don't know many details of this prayer, but we do know that he quotes part of it in chapter, in verse nine.
What could be gained in my death? Let's put this in modern perspective. If you were dying and you wanted God to live, let you live, would you pray this prayer that the psalmist prayed?
Taking it out of the rhetorical question, would you pray to God like this?
God, you should allow me to live, because if I die, there will be one less person here to praise you.
Think about that. If I die, I won't be here to praise you. So you better let me live now. That's what the psalmist prayed, who didn't have Jesus?
We have Jesus. And so hebrew writer says, we ought to be bold and confident.
Brethren, I still don't know what confidence and boldness means. After looking at the psalms, I still struggle with it.
He didn't hold back. He didn't make excuses. He said, here's where I am, and this is what I think is good, and it'll be to your benefit. He's bargaining with God. Look, let me live and I'll praise you. If I die, I won't be here on earth to praise you and testify to your name and so forth. We can multiply these examples, and when you get to studying the psalms, you see them. They pop up everywhere.
You see, the psalmists were real people. I think often we kind of. David wrote some of the psalms, and Moses wrote one and Solomon wrote one, and we sort of go through it. But these were real people just like us. Every emotion that you have, you can find it in the psalm. I've been wanting somebody to write, or a co author with me or somebody else, a book on psalms and counseling where the counselor, when he gives the person that's struggling with psychological issues an assignment, tells them to go read these psalms.
It'd be a great book to use. That way they experienced the similar problems that we do. They realized they had adversity in their lives.
There was a sense of resignation and acceptance. They would pray. And if God answered, they would praise him. If God answered them yes, they would praise him. If he answered them no, they accepted that because God is God.
So in short, they believe that if God could put pressures on them, their relationship was so strong with God and so close, they could put counterpressures on God.
We in this world have often been so afraid we're going to make God angry that we have to show so much respect. We create distance.
We create distance from God and we should not. Jesus is our elder brother. He understands.
So how can we take these and create a life or a culture of prayer where we change our faith? To have the confidence to talk to God like this?
Let me back up and say we got to change our thinking in one way.
When I went to school and I got systematic theology, we like to talk about God is omniscient, God is omnipotent, God is omnipresent, God knows Everything. God is everywhere at the same time, and God's all powerful.
Okay, except I'm not a theologian, I'm a biblist. And those terms aren't biblical.
Have you thought about that? Those terms aren't biblical.
There are passages that talk about God knowing everything and then there are passages that talk about him not knowing everything.
I believe them, but that's a contradiction. Well, who says I gotta, that's God. Who says I got to reconcile them, I have to believe them. So one thing we have to realize is that it's difficult to pray for God to do something in our life when if we argue omniscience in the way we do while we're praying the prayer, we believe, he already knows what we will pray and the results of the prayer. That's what happened to me.
And so you go, without realizing they never heard Calvin. You go back that way, why am I praying?
And so do you believe that God, you can change God's mind? It's difficult to believe then that we can change God's mind, but we need to believe that we can.
And we often quote, as we did in the devotional, and it was good this morning. Jesus in the garden said, let this cup pass from me.
But nevertheless, your will be done. But we take it out of context and we say, well, God's will's got to be done. Well, that's a given.
God's will's gonna be done. But Jesus was praying, I don't want to do this. Is there any other way we can do this?
And the hebrew writer says he learned obedience through the things he suffered. Sometimes God says, no, you need to learn some more things.
Sometimes he says, yes, but let's not be guilty of saying, God didn't answer my prayer. Maybe we didn't look for the answer, but God answered the prayer.
But this thing about knowledge. Notice some old Testament passages. Genesis 20 212.
Abraham had struggled in chapter twelve through 21. In every chapter there's something where Abraham has a faith problem.
But in chapter 22, God says, offer your son Isaac. And he does. God stops him, though.
Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now. I know that you fear God.
Rather intriguing.
God didn't know something before.
Now he does. Sounds like it. But it causes a problem for us because we're thinking in terms of facts. The relationship has changed and grown deeper. God was patient with Abraham when he struggled through his faith. But now that he's done it correctly, he and Abraham have a better relationship. So how does that work? Well, look at the other passages. Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore son.
That's not facts, that's a relationship. Joseph did not know Mary until she brought forth her first born son. That's not facts, that's a relationship.
Genesis 18.
God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And he says, shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do because I know how he will raise his children? Watch your new translations. The ESB, which I love to use, has chose there. I have chosen Abraham.
That's not the hebrew word. Why did they put it in there? Because it fits better with their theology on predestination. So God chose Abraham. That's why we need to read the Bible in all translations. The ASV, KJV, RSV, and others have the word no, which is what the Hebrew has. I know Abraham. I have a relationship with him. So he had a relationship there. But in 22, the relationship is deeper.
And then the second thing we need to do is start asking the right questions.
Ronnie will remember this. When I was in the young preacher, the brotherhood was on fire about how the Holy Spirit dwelt in us.
Did he dwell in us separate and apart from the word, but non miraculously?
Did he dwell in us through the word only?
Did he not dwell in us at all?
Ronnie? It took me a long time, but I finally realized I don't know how he dwells in me. That's the Holy Spirit's job. He knows how to do it. My job is to believe it.
And sometimes we keep asking how God does stuff when it's the wrong question. How does God answer prayer? Well, various ways. Look for him in your life. But I don't know any specific way that he answers prayer. But he does, and I believe it.
Don't ask how. It won't make you any more spiritual. It won't make you a better person.
But you start believing it and looking for God's answered prayers, answering your prayers in your life, and it'll make you much deeper, much deeper relationship.
So that's what we've got to do. So we must pray believing, believing that God will help us. Even when we don't get the answer, we won't. And I could go to wandering here. There's a lot of fascinating passages in the Old Testament I won't like. David asked God, if I go, will Saul kill me? And God said, yeah. And he said, then I'm not going.
What?
So you see, the future is open.
And then David's running from Absalom, and he prays, let the advice of the hitherfell come to knock. And God said, no. And yes, the hitherfael gave the advice to Absalom about raping David's concubines, and Ahithfel gave the advice about pursuing him, but he did not take it. He took David's spy advice. So David prayed one prayer and got two answers.
That's rather intriguing to me. Prayer is much deeper. We need to pray believing and look for God answering our prayers in our life. Well, if you're going to create a culture of prayer, this part's easy because there's so many passages and we haven't cited all of them.
Pray without ceasing, that is, constantly first. Thessalonians 517.
Pray at all times in the spirit with prayer and supplication. Ephesians 618. Our epigraph, verse in everything but prayer and supplication. Philippians four six. Obviously, we should go around all day long in an attitude of prayer that we could pray anytime, any place, anywhere.
Pray knowing that the spirit helps our weakness. Romans 826. Pray. Pray believing. Believe that God will receive our prayers and answer them. Mark 1124. Pray persistently, like Jesus's parable of a friend. At midnight. Pray for brethren not to do wrong, but to do right. Pray logically.
That's two corinthians 13 seven. Pray logically, seriously and spiritually. Paul says, I will pray with my spirit, and I'll pray with my mind, not just empty repetitions. One corinthians 1415. Pray for open doors that souls will be saved all during the grew up in the Cold War. Never thought I'd go to Russia.
We prayed for open doors. Please don't, Lord. Open the doors. Open the doors. Give us an open door. When he opened them, we didn't have enough people to go through the door. It was so big.
My mission work taught me something about prayer. We crisp prayers from our brethren and pray for them. Pray in every place. One Timothy two eight. Pray when suffering. James. James 513. Pray confessing our sins one to another. 516 pray for each other's well being. John three two.
So we can all pray everywhere, anytime, any place.
Have you ever attended a prayer meeting?
Some of you may have. I had never attended one until I helped organize it. I did a psalm seminar on a weekend for church, and the elders decided that they were going to meet on Sunday afternoon before evening worship and have nothing but prayer for an hour. Another congregation decided that. Another one said, well, what we'll do is we'll get volunteers who want to be prayer warriors, and they'll just pray all the time.
They'll work up cycles and people will pray all the time for things that need praying for.
However often we're like the early church.
Acts twelve two. Peter Herod killed James, the brother John, and imprisoned Peter. The church engaged in earnest prayer for Peter. Verse six.
When Peter appeared in verses twelve through 16, they didn't believe it.
Sounds like us, doesn't it? You ever prayed for something that comes about and you go, did God answer that? Or is that just a coincidence? Or surely that's not the answer to what I prayed for.
We need to start believing.
The early church fasted and prayed. It was a private matter. Fasting is. But what if a church decided to engage with volunteers in a period of time of fasting and prayer?
What is accomplished by fasting and prayer?
What about the dedicated place to prayer?
Paul met Lydia at a place of prayer in Philippi. Jesus commanded to go in the inner room and pray. The father who knows will hear and answer. Don't pray out in public for people to see how religious you are.
So it's amazing to me how simple prayer is for us. Our intermediary is Jesus. We can organize group prayers, public prayers, church prayers, prayer meetings. Individuals can pray anytime, any place, anywhere. You can pray at red lights, stop signs, shopping in the mall, hospitals, playing golf, hunting and fishing. Name the scenario. You can pray.
That's interesting. See how close we can be to God in doing that. In those prayers, we can express our true feelings.
And we have confidence that regardless of how God answers yes or no or wait a while. That it will be for our benefit and what is best for us. We may not know it now, but we will later.
So what if you create a prayer diary? I used to have one. Had a family have one. It's nothing more. I bought them daily prayer book. It had a calendar. Well, you can make your own on this date.
This is my prayer. On this date also is where God answered my prayer. Previously on this date.
I think part of the problem is we don't look for the answers to our prayers that we prayed. And I'm afraid that we sometimes think we're going to be guilty of testifying. So we don't tell those. You want to build the faith of somebody, just tell them something in your life where you believe and would take to your grave that you prayed for this. And here's how God answered it. That builds us up and gives us all courage. That's not a miraculous thing. It's just edifying and teaching. And the beauty of that is every Christian has it, and it's one on one with God in an intimate way, just like in a family where you can say anything.
When we don't feel we can say anything, it's because of baggage that we're carrying, I believe baggage that I carried. And so it's a wonderful opportunity.
The thing is, if you're not a Christian or you're out of faith, out of duty in Christ, that privilege is gone. Yeah, I know.
The Lord hears sinners prayers. I told somebody one time that asked that in class. Well, he heard Cornelius, but Cornelius was trying to find what he needed to do to be saved.
That's a little different than some sinner out here lived a vagabond life and then gets in trouble and wants God to help him through that trouble. That's a little different. But the Christian who gets in trouble can always pray. God, I need your help now. And you're the one that knows, but this is what I think I need. And if there's something on you're not happy, you're not happy about this, think what an intimate thing it is for a child of God to be able to do that. But a person who does it is not a child of God. Not in a faithful relationship. They're left out in the cold. So we're going to sing an invitation song. We want you to be intimate with God. We want you to feel comfortable talking with God. But if you're out of duty or not Christian, you need to find, come and obey your Lord in baptism and become a New Testament Christian, you're out of duty. You need to come so that you can have this greatest of blessings in praying to God exactly how you feel. Come as we stand and sing.
